Forum: Gaia, Gaia: don't go away

Don't do it, Jim. The inventor of the Gaia hypothesis is thinking of recanting. Spurred on by colleagues who tell him that scientists will never accept anything named after a Greek goddess, James Lovelock says: 'I think I want to drop the term.' What would he put in its place? The rather less ringing, but more scientific sounding 'global geophysiology'. In the process, the idea behind Gaia is changing too, many people believe.

Gaia has been a liberating idea for many younger natural scientists and environmentalists. It is founded on the observation that the fundamental features of the surface of our planet would not be the way they are without living organisms. Lovelock argues that they helped to create, and constantly to maintain, the chemistry of both the atmosphere and the oceans. More explosive still, the Gaia hypothesis suggests that living things do this in a manner that regulates the ...

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